On gradient bounds for the heat kernel on the Heisenberg group (Q960561)

The very interesting paper under review deals with gradient bounds for the heat kernel on the Heisenberg group. It is known that the couple formed by the two-dimensional Brownian motion and its Lévy area leads to the heat kernel on the Heisenberg group, which is one of the simplest sub-Riemannian space. The associated diffusion operator is hypoelliptic but not elliptic, which makes difficult the derivation of functional inequalities for the heat kernel. However, \textit{B. K. Driver} and \textit{T. Melcher} [J. Funct. Anal. 221, No. 2, 340--365 (2005; Zbl 1071.22005)] and more recently \textit{H.-Q. Li} [J. Funct. Anal. 236, No. 2, 369--394 (2006; Zbl 1106.22009); C. R., Math., Acad. Sci. Paris 344, No. 8, 497--502 (2007; Zbl 1114.22007)] have obtained useful gradient bounds for the heat kernel on the Heisenberg group. The paper provides simple proofs of all these bounds, and explore their consequences in terms of functional inequalities, including Cheeger [\textit{J. Cheeger}, Probl. Analysis, Sympos. in Honor of Salomon Bochner, Princeton Univ. 1969, 195--199 (1970; Zbl 0212.44903)] and Bobkov [\textit{S. G. Bobkov}, J. Funct. Anal. 135, No. 1, 39--49 (1996; Zbl 0838.60013); Ann. Probab. 25, No. 1, 206--214 (1997; Zbl 0883.60031)] type isoperimetric inequalities for the heat kernel.